


Libra

by ProlixEllipsis



Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 11:12:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3726601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProlixEllipsis/pseuds/ProlixEllipsis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The meaning of nothing weighs on his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Libra

**Author's Note:**

> I take some artistic license with Ulquiorra’s motivations.

Ulquiorra Cifer was nothing.

His presence was an absence: the absence of passion, the absence of _com_ passion.

The very essence of apathy.

 

Ulquiorra was nothing if not precise. A living calculator – “living” debatable. Every movement measured, every action accounted for.

 

Grimmjow, on the other hand…

Grimmjow was all unfocused energy – speed and zeal and bluster without _direction_. An incomplete equation.

 

Ulquiorra was nothing if not efficient.

 

He thought, watching Grimmjow storm the halls –

 

_Because this was a different sight than the day before or even the day before that. Grimmjow was without his fraccion. Grimmjow was_ alone _._

That perhaps Grimmjow did, in fact, have direction. Perhaps the sexta’s problem merely lay in too _many_ directions. Striking out at everything and thus striking nothing at all. It was woefully inefficient, but Ulquiorra did not – _refused to_ – dwell on it.

 

Ulquiorra was nothing if not completely loyal.

If there was one thing Ulquiorra cared about – and there was only one thing Ulquiorra cared about – it was purpose. Without purpose he was a hollow in more than name. Without purpose a creature like himself couldn’t exist. He had to be useful. He had to be used.

 

_To what end?_

 

It didn’t matter.

 

_Why? By who?_

 

Those questions had long been conflated and no matter how long or how deeply he contemplated them, he always seemed to come up blank.

 

Grimmjow was not a tool. He was a weapon, undoubtedly, honed sharp on instinct and whetted with ambition – a deadly instrument of destruction. But he would not be used. It was a damnable waste, Ulquiorra thought, but he could not bring himself to dismiss the sexta. After all, Aizen had yet to do away with him…at least, not entirely. Waste was not trash. Power could be carved from raw potential.

 

Ulquiorra was nothing if not methodical. Every step, every breath, had purpose. Nothing was without reason. Reason was all he had. He watched and waited and analyzed, and while Grimmjow fought the boy from the human world for the third time, this time against the backdrop of Hueco Mundo’s blinding white sands and midnight sky – _Kurosaki Ichigo…Shinigami…trash_ – he came to a conclusion.

 

Ulquiorra was nothing if not completely loyal. So when the fight was over, when the substitute shinigami had nearly defeated the sexta, he fulfilled his purpose. He trounced the boy, retrieved the girl, and retreated to wait for any foolish enough to seek out destruction. Whichever fool came first.

 

Ulquiorra lacked and Grimmjow exuded excess, but this imbalance could be corrected. It was a simple matter of subtraction, addition…substitution.


End file.
